the west sabotages its own potential for escapist media by making it all overly serious instead, EVERYTHING needs to have a message and/or represent reality to some degree in hopes that that'll help real life issues, and then it doesn't and those issues remain anyway lol

I miss when western media was wacky enough to include a bullet-shooting race car in your medieval era game with monks that turn people's clothes another color to recruit them to their cause by going "wololo" at them

I think it might be more connected with the obsessive work culture of Japan. When you're working 80 hours a week, escapism is almost necessary, and these shows thrive by giving the most emotional relief possible in what little free time the viewer has before they have to go back to the psychological meat grinder that is the Japanese workplace